COOPERATIVAS DE MÃO DE OBRA NO MARANHÃO NO PERÍODO DE 1990 A 2010: precarização do trabalho e redução de custos na lógica da reestruturação capitalista

Abstract

This essay is focused on the study of the Labor Cooperative Societies in Maranhão, from 1990 to 2010, which, following the examples coming from other Brazilian states, have proliferated as a way of intermediation of labor in order to attend the necessities of outsourcing of private companies and public entities. This research‟s analysis has its starting point with the contemplation on the binomial of the mitigation of work and the costs reduction present in this form of hiring workers, so as to attend to the logics of the capitalist restructuration, in a total disagreement with the conceptions of cooperativism. Three pivotal questions are elected for the comprehension of the phenomenon. In the first one, the cooperativism‟s historical trajectory is rescued, since its original conception, ideological aspects, global expansion, and the way through which it was implanted in Brazil, in addition to recovering international organisms‟ conceptions, those of the International Cooperative Alliance and the International Labor Organization (ILO), and the national legislation that concerns the cooperatives. In the second pivotal question, the relevant transformations in the capitalist means of production and their effects in the world of work are discussed, being emphasized the outsourcing process and its effects, among which the mitigation and the discussions that bring together disgraced workers of informality. Also discussed in this topic is whether the Labor Cooperatives consist of an alternative to insert workers into the market or if they contribute to deplete work relations once it reduces costs for the hiring company and the service taker. In the third pivotal point, it is presented a theoretical-conceptual discussion on the cost of work and the social duties in the employment relations as well as the cost of the work coming from associated workforce and the way how they influence the form how private companies and public entities hire their employees. The figures of Brazilian cooperativism, and especially in the state of Maranhão are evidenced as well as the discussion over the role that workforce cooperatives possess, they being subspecies of Labor Cooperatives before the new law of cooperatives as a way to correct the presented distortions.